"I been Norman Mailered . . ."
by Billy Joe Mills • Nov 10th, 2007 at 9:46 am •
So long to Mr. Normal Mailer. If I had the courage and the talent to be a writer, I would be like Norman Mailer. A writer digs at rocks for truth, Mailer did that. A writer uses his blood as ink and open heart as pen, Mailer did that.
NYT Obit.
Mailer’s famous article discussing JF Kennedy and politics and life, Superman Comes to the Supermarket.
Comment by Mike Täht on 12 November 2007 at 1:48 pm:
I get songs stuck in my head sometimes, and you did it to me last week with this post…
Problem was I could remember the next line of the song “Maxwell Taylor’d” but not who it was.
Turns out it was Simon and Garfunkels A Simple Desultory Philippic, which is strangely appropriate for today’s world….
Comment by tet on 12 November 2007 at 2:12 pm:
“Andy Warhol, won’t you please come home….”
Why do you say that it is appropriate? (Any more so than anything else from the Sixties–I saw Across the Universe and it brought a lot of memories back.)
Tom
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 13 November 2007 at 8:48 am:
mike and tet, I’m just glad that somebody got it. thanks. I love S&G.
Comment by tet on 13 November 2007 at 10:13 am:
Paul is using Sounds of Silence as his unofficial campaign theme:
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
and tenement halls
and whispered in the sounds of silence….”
Tom
Comment by Mike Täht on 13 November 2007 at 9:26 pm:
The song is appropriate because it talks about guilt by (sometimes ludicrous) association - “a communist because I’m left handed”, and it also pokes studied fun at ignorance - like “he doesn’t dig poetry… when you say dylan, he thinks you are talking about dylan thomas, whoever he was. The man ain’t got no culture.”
I am a big S&G fan, too. When I still had hair, it looked like Garfunkel’s.